Different molds have long been interchanged on basic plastic extrusion blow molding machines in a time consuming, laborious process. These machines are often customized and use molds which comprise an assembly of parts which normally remain together as an operative unit. That is, each time a conventional new mold is purchased, associated parts such as a back plate and a water manifold for supplying coolant water are provided for that new mold so as to permit the parts to be installed and later removed as an operative unit. Another part required for that new mold is a detabber. As is well known to those skilled in the art, in such blow molding machines, a tab of plastic (attached to a base of a blow molded object such as a container) is formed and must be removed prior to completion of the molding process. A detabber having a stripper bar which has been previously used with success is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,419,063 assigned to the assignee of this invention. The stripper bar is power operated to pivot against a mating fixed stripper plate for removing the tab from the molded object.
A series of heretofore unsolved problems are associated with the changing of a mold in a plastic extrusion blow molding machine. These problems involve the disassembly of water hoses from their connection on a side of the back plate and the disassembly of air feed hoses to the detabber, in addition to the removal of operative parts from the extrusion blow molding machine whereby the highly labor intensive, critical alignment of the mold to that machine is lost. To remove one mold and attach a new mold thus may take as long as three hours in disassembly of one mold from the machine, including disconnecting the water hoses and air feed hoses for respectively delivering required water to the blow mold and motive air power to the detabber, and then aligning a new mold to the machine, and again establishing the necessary fluid connections to the water manifold and the detabber.